U.S. Department of Agriculture

U.S. Department of AgricultureThe United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, rural development, nutrition, and related issues based on public policy, the best available science, and effective management. The USDA has a vision to provide economic opportunity through innovation, helping rural America to thrive; to promote agriculture production that better nourishes Americans while also helping feed others throughout the world; and to preserve our Nation’s natural resources through conservation, restored forests, improved watersheds, and healthy private working lands.

Know Your Farmer Know Your Food
The U.S. Department of Agriculture launched the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative in 2009. The initiative brings together staff from across USDA to coordinate, share resources, and publicize USDA efforts related to local and regional food systems. See USDA-supported local and regional food projects across the country by visiting our interactive map.

Local Food Directories: National Farmer’s Market Directory
The Farmers Market Directory lists markets that feature two or more farm vendors selling agricultural products directly to customers at a common, recurrent physical location. Maintained by the Agricultural Marketing Service, the Directory is designed to provide consumers with convenient access to information about farmers market listings to include: market locations, directions, operating times, product offerings, accepted forms of payment, and more.

Webinar Series: Planning for Farm to School Success in 2016
reliminary results of the 2015 Farm to School Census tell us that more than 1,700 school districts don’t yet have farm to school programs, but are interested in starting one. We’re here to help! Through this 11-part series, we’ll guide you through the USDA Farm to School Planning Toolkit. Served up in bite-sized 30 minute webinars, we’ll offer questions to consider and helpful resources to reference when starting or growing a farm to school program. Guest speakers will join the webinars to share their hands on farm to school experiences.

The Economics of Local Food Systems: A Toolkit to Guide Community Discussions, Assessments and Choices
The Toolkit is made up of seven modules that can be grouped into two stages of food system planning, assessment, and evaluation. The first set of modules (1-4) guides the preliminary stages of an impact assessment and includes framing the system, relevant economic activities and assessment process as well as collecting and analyzing relevant primary and secondary data. For those seeking a more robust economic impact assessment, the second set of modules (5-7) provides a more technical set of practices and discussion of how to use the information collected in stage one to conduct a more rigorous analysis.

Key Partnership

The American Planning Association’s Planning and Community Health Center has partnered with the American Public Health Association at the national level. This key partnership ensures that the conversations, lessons learned, and experiences of towns and cities across the country are part of the national agenda to prevent chronic diseases.